Saturday, March 29, 2014

Oxygen Tanks

On Thursday night, the health care company delivered oxygen tanks to our house in preparation for Roscoe's homecoming on Tuesday. The large one is a 125lb tank that will be his main oxygen supply. The green hose attached to the top is 25ft long and will let him roam from our bedroom to his room.

When we want to take him into another room, downstairs, on a walk, or elsewhere we can use one of the 12 the smaller portable tanks. The big tank will last about a month and the small ones will last about 16 hours each. We'll call the health care company to get them refilled/replaced once the tanks start running low.

On each tank that's actively being used, there's a valve like this one below:

The valve shows how much pressure is left in the tank on the white dial. The black knob on the left side allows us to adjust the volume of oxygen that will be delivered through the hose. They asked us to set Roscoe at 1/8th of a liter (125mL) per hour, even though he was stable at 80-100mL at the hospital. By comparison, the delivery guy said that most elderly folks who need oxygen start at 2,000mL/hour and go up to 10,000mL/hour.